Love at a Reasonable Price

If you’re like me, you’d like to overflow with Pure Love for everyone, and know and do what’s best for everyone — so long as it didn’t cost you a nice happy safe home with an attractive mate and healthy offspring, supported by an interesting, fulfilling, and high-paying job with plenty of time for exercise, cooking balanced meals, chatting in coffee shops and wine bars, and otherwise taking it easy and living well.

If you’re like me, you’d like to be wise and good, but you’re really busy and selfish and it is hard to make time and space for spiritual practice.

If you’re like me, you’d like to organize your thinking, feeling, and acting better and better around the Love shining in and through all things that alone knows that and in what way it is True to say, “We are all in this together.” You would like more and more whole-being (ideas, feelings, and Soullight all interacting meaningfully, though of course not literally/1:1-ily/definitively with each other) insight into how things really are, what really matters, and how best to fit oneself into the flow of all things. You would like to feel/think/act more and more aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, kind, joyfully-sharing and gratefully-interconnected. You would like to grow in wisdom, but you’re afraid of losing nice things that you want and feel a great need to want, and you find it hard to make time for spiritual practice, and spiritual practice hurts you — it riles up the Hurt, which is always screaming in the pit of your gut, wailing on and swirling out with a shattered-watch-face kind of broken yowling that pulls your shoulders down, tucks your sex and knees up, and generally seeks to roll you into a little ball that grows smaller and smaller until it reaches a singularity and then pops out of existence.

Don’t worry! You’ve come to the right place! With our patented spiritual practice, you can gain supreme enlightenment painlessly and without any particular risk to your pettier desires.

I know! Meditation hurts. It is scary. It is lonely. Let’s put it to one side for a bit. If we feel strong enough for it later, we’ll take it up again. And if you feel strong enough for it now: by all means! But if not, let’s relax on it.

Ditto volunteering your time to help the poor and for other just causes. If such precise commitments to specific kindnesses seem too overwhelming and scary, forget them for the nonce.

For now, let’s just always notice that we each have a conscious space shining through us, and seek to see that conscious space in others. Let’s just look for the Love shining in and through our own conscious space, and let it explodes through everything and everyone, knitting us all together. In our daily lives. When we’re at work and otherwise spinning our wheels. Or when we are talking with friends and family. Or on the subway. Always just as a little game — yes, no pressure!, just a game! — played in the background: The game of feeling joyful love exploding through and ultimately being everything, feeling how that radiation of kind delight is all there really is, and how we are all children of that Light and thus brothers and sisters all.

You can walk down the street, seeking inward for the Pure Love shining through and most essentially being you and outward for that some Lovelight shining in everyone you pass. You can imagine some to get things started: imagine the core of Love as a line of joyful energy radiating through your center and through the center of everyone else: imagine you and people in your life or people who just happen to pass by shining from the centerline out with the joyful glow of a loving kindness so bright and persistent that it turns out to be everything that ever was and ever will be.

That’s all! No pressure! Just a fun game to relax the Hurt’s grasp and share a smile with the people that you meet when you’re moving through the world each day.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

We broke the walls, we won the wars; you see:
we lasted longer, laughed out louder, sang
up mightier and more convincingly.
Don’t block the way of winners; do not hang
around, your bellies out and ears slicked back.
We’ll show you where you stand: back o’the pack!
We’ll take you as wives; you’ll share our desires.
We’ll make you alive to our dreams and fires.
You will see what love can do; it can splice
marauder and victim, join crime to joy.
In time, forget the world I sacrificed
while serving conquest. Smile at a toy
I gift our child. Laugh as we joke on through.
And smile when I say — and you know it is true —
that I love only you.

Author: Hmm
Editors: BW/AW
Copyright: AMW

I give up
Does anyone care?
no

I give up
Does it make a difference?
no

I am lonely
does that matter?
I guess not

Can anyone hear me?
No, I am talking to myself

Why am I here?
What was I supposed to do?
And now?

I’m tired
I give up

Zeus: Remember the day that Bartleby Willard came dressed to work as a cat burglar?

Zeus morphs into Hera and slides over next to where Zeus had been.

Hera: Ah, yes, but didn’t he turn out to be a cat burglar? Was it not subsequently reverted that his publishing work was just a over for his real career as the world’s greatest thief?

Hera morphs into Poseidon and slides over next to where Hera had been.

Poseidon: Indeed! The publishing getup was just to throw the law off.

Poseidon morphs into Athena and slides over next to where Poseidon had been (a semi-circle is being sketched by these sliding positionings).

Athena: And it worked! They didn’t catch up with him until it was too late and he’d disappeared after pulling off the greatest heist in human history and making off with the most valuable jewel known to man or god!

Athena becomes Mars, who says, “The hearts of all peoples in all times and spaces. Quite the haul! Quite the caper.” Mars completes the half circle from where Zeus had been. He walks towards Zeus’s spot as he morphs back into largest and most impossibly muscled of the Olympians.

Zeus: In short order, both the law and the Law cooled off and let the whole matter slide. And with good reason: A stolen heart’s not so much stolen as willfully shared. And what the infinite peoples of the infinite worlds received in exchange for their undying devotion and affection was well worth the trade.

Hera: A shared spiritual language! And with it the foundation for workable democracies!

Poseidon: And so mortals finally learned to govern themselves by together understanding how to share the divine sign that does and does not mind being called “Zeus”!

Zeus bursts out laughing: That one gets me every time!

But Amble is sitting on an old wooden chair off to one side as the Gods — who are all played by the shapeshifting Bartleby Willard — strut their eternal stuff.

“I want to have a part!”

Zeus morphs into the thin, flat-chested, lightbulb-headed, transparent Bartleby Willard in brown tweed suit complete with plaid vest, leather hightop boots, and a brown bowler. “You’re too puny to play a god!”

Amble leans back in the chair, which wobbles on its square legs and would fall, but Bartleby catches it with his mind and brings it back down onto all fours.

Bartleby: You want to be a human accepting the gift of fire from Prometheus?

Amble: Not really. I already have fire.

Bartleby: Yeah, but it’s not just fire. It’s also technology.

Amble: We already have that too — and way better than the ancient Greeks did.

Bartleby: If mortals know what’s good for them, they’ll shut up and gratefully accept gifts from the gods!

Amble: I thought Prometheus was a titan.

Bartleby: Same difference.

Amble: Well, I dunno, but I already have a cell phone, and I don’t think Prometheus ever did.

Bartleby: You want to play Xenophanes of Colophon?

Amble: Maybe. He’s got a lot of cool fragments.

Bartleby: “God is one, supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals in body or in mind.”

Amble: Hey! I’m Xenophanes! That’s my line!

Bartleby: “Accordingly there has not been a man, nor will there be, who knows distinctly what I say about the gods or in regard to all things, for even if one chances for the most part to say what is true, still he would not know; but every one thinks he knows.”

Amble: Stop using all my lines!

Bartleby: “These things have seemed to me to resemble the truth.”

Amble: I mean it!

Bartleby: “In the beginning the gods did not at all reveal all things clearly to mortals, but by searching men in the course of time find them out better.”

Amble: Ugh!

Bartleby: “The following are fit topics for conversation for men reclining on a soft couch by the fire in the winter season, when after a meal they are drinking sweet wine and eating a little pulse: Who are you, and what is your family ? What is your acre, my friend? How old were you when the Medes invaded this land?”

Amble: You can have that one. I hate sweet wine anyway.

Author: BW/AW
Editor: AW/BW
Copyright: AM Watson

It isn’t that evil is an illusion.
Evil is illusion.

I don’t know what’s to be done.
Biden didn’t steal the election.
Trump tried to steal it.
And he had also tried to undermine democracy
while in office.

If you destroy democracy in the United States of America
you will go to hell and stay there a long time.

There is no perfection in human governments,
but we could do much worse here,
and we will if Stop the Steal succeeds
in stealing all future elections
from the people.
Do they know that’s what they are up to?
Does it matter?

What’s the difference between idiocy and evil?
What’s the difference?
They both lust after and exult in confusion.

Now
the evil rises
up from the belly
of the sea
as a bubble
that pops oil
on its shimmering surface

Now
the evil laughs
and slaps us
all on the back
Hah hah hah
you can take a joke can’t you?

Authors: AW/BW
Editors: BW/AW
Copyright: AMW

2000 or 1
Everything pebbly-concrete slab.
Walk over that kind of bridge
Wide pedestrian bridge over the highway
100 feet across. Pebbly road and walls same.
From the concrete dorms over the concrete plaza
and then crossing the concrete bridge
but not all the way to the concrete campus.
A concrete-walled bar.
A little outpost on one side of the center of the bridge.
Dark and warm inside.
Some day a little gray
A little swirling outside
Gemuetlich inside
and this is the plan in action
A young man
oh so young a man
buys a red wine
from the wooden countertop
on the side closest
the dorms
after having walked through
the door out onto the bridge.
Settles with his wine
into a plush couch
or chair
or I forget
in the dark room.
The Gorillaz Clint Eastwood
shining through the room.
A pensive bite, sip, drag,
HMMMMM
what does it mean?
Wine chocolate cigarrette/
what does it mean?
He thinks it through:
bite, sip, drag.

And then
two German couples
20ish like our hero
wanted to talk
he forgets about what.

Authors: BW/AW
Editors: AW/BW
Copyright: AMW

[Editor’s Note: Well, there they go again! And God bless ’em for try’in! The philosophical arguments for pursuing Something Deeperism get a little boggy. That’s probably dealt with better in the Something Deeperism Institute. But starting with

The individual human has no choice but to seek to grow in the Love that (supposing It exists) Knows we are all in this together and that alone has the ability to help one feel/think/act more aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, and joyfully-sharing.

this attempt becomes a blessedly short and fairly readable argument for the spiritual value of liberal, representative democracy. It might also help to read the first paragraph (right below us here) so that you know what they mean when they say “universal values”. Unless you’ve ever met our author and editor before, in which case, you already know exactly what they mean as once again pace back and forth over the same ground, muttering the same soliloquy. In conclusion: Be that as it may, and God bless them for trying!]

We humans share universal values. We need to think/feel/act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, kind, and joyful-sharing, seeking always what is truly best for everyone. Nothing we humans say or do is meaningful to us except to the degree we follow these values. We do not experience these values as relative; we do not feel that we should seek what is “’truly best for everyone’ – insofar as I understand the terms”; we feel that we should seek what is “truly best for everyone”, which implies an Absolute sense, and thus an underlying spiritual commitment. We don’t know from the outset if there is such a thing as “truly best”, but we do know that we can only be meaningful to ourselves to the degree that we succeed in discovering that and in what sense “truly best” exists. This implies a direction: We need to seek what is “truly best”.

But what is “truly best”? Either “truly best” is what we feel deep inside it must be, or what is “truly best” is not something that can mean anything to our feelings and ideas. And since feelings and ideas are a large part of how we interface with our lives, if what is “truly best” cannot mean anything to our feelings and ideas, we cannot meaningfully grow in wisdom. That is to say: we need the Absolute to ratify and explicate the universal values; otherwise, all is lost because we will never be able to relate meaningfully to the Absolute, and thus we will not be able to grow in wisdom. Once again, we cannot conclude anything from this except a direction: We need to seek wisdom, and we need our inner sense about wisdom to be right: we need wisdom to require kindness to everyone; otherwise, wisdom cannot make any sense to our hearts/minds. Our only hope is that by developing our inner sense about a Love that is “truly wisest and best” we can gain more and more insight into what is really going on and what really matters. Otherwise, we have no way to meaningfully relate to what is really going on and what really matters – we’d lack the tools for recognizing and meaningfully relating to the Absolute.

But what is Love? What is “truly wisest and best”? Humans are not Absolute. Our feeling/thinking/acting is limited. Human ideas and feelings about things what is “truly best” could never be identical with what is “truly best”. And pretending our ideas and feelings about “truly best” are identical with “truly best” causes a great deal of evil. However, we know that we don’t really understand literal ideas anyway: we just use them as tools to solve certain types of problems. Same for feelings: we don’t understand them enough to truly believe or disbelieve in them. We feelingly use ideas and feelings to interact with human-sized life; but we don’t really understand any of it. So how could we expect to understand ideas and feelings about what must be larger and wider than human-sized life (note that the Absolute loses Its Absoluteness if we make it fit our ideas and feelings)?

Without a meaningful relationship to the Absolute (which alone would be capable of providing non-relative validation and explication of the universal values and their underlying spiritual sense), our feeling/thinking/acting cannot be meaningful to itself. But what is it for a limited creature to have a meaningful relationship with the Absolute? The relationship we seek cannot possibly be an Absolute one. The knowledge we seek cannot possibly be literal/definitive/1:1. What can our relationship with the Truth be? What can our knowledge of the Truth be like?

Supposing wisdom exists, it must be like this:

Wisdom is growing deeper and deeper in the kind of insight that is possible for humans: it is a self-critiquing/-improving organization of our feeling/thinking/acting around the Love within that alone Knows that and in what sense it is True to say, “We are all in this together.”
We don’t know at the outset that such a Love exists or that meaningfully relating to It is possible for us.

But we do know that that is our only hope. (Because we are limited creatures who do not understand our own feelings and ideas in an Absolute way, but who do need an Absolute foundation in order to understand, believe in, and care about our own feeling/thinking/acting. [Note the distinction between understanding ideas and/or feelings versus understanding an overall gist of one’s feeling/thinking/acting as it organizes itself better and better around a Love that Knows that and in what sense it is True to say we are all in this together: Picture adequate wisdom as a tipping point where one’s feeling/thinking/acting as a whole has enough experience of Love so as to possess an inside-out, experimental proof for the Reality of Love.])

And we also know that what we’ve just sketched here is a standard non-fundamentalist spiritual path. It is the path that puts our inner faith in the Love that choose everyone ahead of our faith in our ability to literally / definitively understand what is going on and what should be done.

[Note that even if xyz religious dogma were True, that Truth would have to be interpreted by human feeling/thinking/acting. That is why true religion has to be founded in spiritual Love, rather than literal believe in dogmas. Dogmas are only useful insofar as they lead to and from a true connection to spiritual Love; and trying to force literal concepts onto feelings of certainty distracts one from engagement in the Love that is prior to human concepts and feelings.]

The individual human has no choice but to seek to grow in the Love that (supposing It exists) Knows we are all in this together and that alone has the ability to help one feel/think/act more aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, and joyfully-sharing. Growing in spiritual Love is the only direction that could possibly lead to more rather than less internal coherency (ie: meaningfulness to one’s self).

And groups of humans? Since individuals can only be meaningful to themselves insofar as they meaningfully engage with and follow the universal values and the concomitant spiritual sense of the brother/sisterhood of all people, groups of humans can only work together meaningfully insofar as they together embrace, engage with, and abide by the universal values. From this it follows that we should seek to form and keep governments that help us together embrace, engage with, and abide by the universal values.

A well-functioning liberal representative democracy allows the people to serve as a final check on madness and corruption in government without spending all their time on the business of government.
The less insane / corrupt (these two evils feed into, exacerbate and eventually merge into one another) a government is, the easier it is to get and maintain power, prestige, and success while being true to the universal values; the more insane / corrupt a government, the harder it is to get and maintain power, prestige, and success while being true to the universal values.

Since goods like “power”, “prestige”, and “success” become more and more linked to goods like “my children have safe drinking water and food” as governments become more and more insane / corrupt, a well-functioning liberal representative democracy – open, honest, equal under the law, with free speech, and shared power and responsibility – is a spiritual good: the more you lose it, the more you force people to choose between their children and their truest, best selves; the more you gain it, the more people are free to be their truest selves alone and together, collaborating on neat and fun and wonderful works while staying true to the Love within that says we are all in this together and should treat one another well.

It is a spiritual duty to protect, nourish, and grow good government practices like openness, transparency, honesty and clarity in debate, equality under the law, freedom of speech and press, and fair elections.

Author: B. Willard
Editor: A. Whistletown
Copyright: A. Watson

Dear Children,

I had no idea. It was the start of August and it moved up so quick and sharp, like a needle in the grass. His birthday really is too early in August. One hasn’t time to adjust to August, and with it September, October — That is to say: Birthday Season.

“What!?!? Birthday Season!?!? Already!?!?” I sputtered, many hours too late, days too late, weeks too late, too late and too far below.

You might say I forgot only the first child’s birthday, and now that I’ve been reminded of Birthday Season, I’m remembering all the rest. But that would be neither fair nor accurate. What I forgot was Birthday Season, which to say: all of your birthdays.

I cannot in good faith recall the birthdays of some but not all children. I cannot in good conscious celebrate three-fourths of Birthday Season, having benefitted from the warning shot of forgetting the first fourth. I cannot, in all decency, recognize any of your birthdays this year, which is 2022.

What can I do?

Author: Uncle Ernest Lee Conssernt
Editors: BW/AW
Copyright: AMW

That’s easy.

It’s Something Deeperism: The general worldview that there is a Truth and humans can relate to It meaningfully, just not in a literal/1:1/definitive way. We can add to that: A human can relate more and more meaningfully to themself by relating more and more meaningfully to the Truth shining in and through all things — including each conscious moment; and a human can relate more and more meaningfully to that Truth by organizing their feeling/thinking/acting better and better around It as It shines through their every conscious moment. Something Deeperism does not seek to force your ideas and feelings to believe or explain the Truth/Light/PureLove, but Something Deeperism does point out to your ideas and feelings that they cannot help but assume something is really going on, and it really matters what we say and do; and so the only possible way forward is to discover that and in what sense this inner sense of things is correct; but this implies an Absolute standard (ie: somethings are Truly Better than others — that’s not just an opinion); and our feeling and thinking (being limited) cannot understand things in Absolute terms; but that’s OK, because what we deep within are seeking for is not perfect intellectual and/or emotional verification and understanding of our inner, indelible assumption that we need to do what is Truly Best; but a whole-being insight. A whole-being insight is ideas, feelings, and the Truth/Light that is Absolute and thus alone Knows that and in what sense it is True to say, “We are all in this together” and that shines through all things, including every conscious moment: all those aspects of our conscious moment working together meaningfully, though of course not literally/1:1/definitively (since they are not equivalent ways of contemplating and understanding).

This is the best philosophy because it matches, confirms, and explicates what we all cannot help but believe.

If you try to pretend you believe what you don’t actually believe, you just confuse your own thought. And if you misunderstand what you believe, you also just confuse your own thought. And if you try to force yourself to literally and/or emotionally confirm and believe what is ultimately prior to literal and/or emotional thought, you also just confuse your own thought. Something Deeperism does not make those errors: It paints a concise picture of where you find yourself within your conscious moment and it charts a course for you to make more sense of that moment by growing whole-being insight (ideas, feelings, and the Light/Truth shining through all things all working meaningfully, though of course not literally/1:1/definitively together) into it (insight into where you find yourself within your conscious moment).

Something Deeperism adequately describes and sketches an adequate blueprint for meaningfully engaging with, verifying, understanding, and growing what we cannot help but believe deep within.

Something Deeperism: The best philosophy because it’s a reasonably clear statement of the philosophy that we all know we already have. And that’s the point of philosophy: To help us deal with where we are within our own conscious moments. It is not true that different people have different best philosophies. We are all fundamentally the same, and thus we all share a core philosophy. Here we call it “Something Deeperism”.

You might say that much of what we’ve stated here cannot be demonstrated with logic. But that is true of all philosophies. You can never prove what underlies and animates all philosophies, religions, worldviews, and notions: some ideas are better than others; some ways of thinking and acting preferable to others; we can coherently choose better thought and action paths. Some people pretend to be nihilists and thus pretend to escape these shared principles, but the fact that they bother to not believe in anything proves how desperately they need to believe that they have it figured out, that they’ve got the right angle on things. (I’m not judging here; I speak from experience and attempt merely to help would-be-nihilists avoid wasting time and gathering unnecessary headaches.)

Philosophies are not supposed to be purely logical. A purely logical philosophy could not be lived. We are not just logical machines. We are also emotional machines. But we are also not just machines: our most core longing is to know what is really going on and what is really best and how to fit ourselves into what is really going on in a way that is truly best. This is a spiritual aspiration, and we will not be meaningful to ourselves except to the degree that we answer this aspiration with spiritual insight. That alone does not prove the existence of a spiritual Reality, but it does demonstrate that if we wish to become more internally-coherent (ie: more meaningful to ourselves), there’s only one direction we can choose: we need to discover that and in what way the spiritual Reality is True. Not only that: But note that within our longing to discover what is going on, we also have the sense that what is really going on has to be kind, has to be Good, has to be gentle and loving, has to have a place for all of us, has to be decent. Again: this does not prove that Reality has to be good to everyone; but it points a clear direction for wisdom-seekers: If wisdom does not ratify loving-kindness, than wisdom will be meaningful to human beings. And so if we think wisdom is asking us to exalt some people at the expense of others, then we know that either (a) we are mistaken about wisdom, or (b) wisdom is meaningless to humans and we have no hope for meaningfully growing in wisdom. Hence Something Deeperism: You can’t literally demonstrate anything about Reality, but you can accept that your only hope for internal-coherence is to more and more clearly understand that and in what way your inner sense that there is a Light of Pure Love shining through everything is True; and so you can seek to grow in wisdom in the only way possible for a human being: better and better organize your feeling/thinking/acting around the (initially perhaps largely assumed but in time hopefully more and better experienced) Light of Pure Love shining in and through all things. And off you go!

Something Deeperism is what we all already know: Relative truths don’t cut it for humans; but Absolute Truth cannot be understood in literal/1:1/definitive terms by human beings; but that’s okay: because we can follow the mystical path and seek for more and more whole-being insight into the Truth that passes but does not therefore necessarily completely blow off understanding. The wiser person does not Know the Truth: they constantly organize their feeling/thinking/acting better and better around the Light/Truth/PureLove/God/BuddhaNature (of course; this implies they are getting some help from said Light), so that their feeling/thinking/acting points more and more adequately well towards the Truth like a poet who adequately captures a moment strolling on the beach, or smelling a flower, or laughing with a friend.

Wisdom is here pictured as an organization around the Light shining and in and through all things, and as a meaningful poetic (in the sense that poetry paints experiences, and experiences are of necessity wider and deeper than ideas and feelings about experiences) relationship with the Light. An ongoing, self-critiquing, self-adjusting organization and poetry.

Authors: Something Deeperism Cheerleading Squad, Chapter Rah, Ra, Sun God, Wha?
Editors: Bartleby Willard & Amble Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson

When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment is, his answer resonated with his audience of fellow first century Palestinian Jews, and it has since resonated with many other people of many other backgrounds.

29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

That’s from Mark 12 in the NIV
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+12&version=NIV

In some other Gospels, some smart aleck then asks Jesus who his neighbor is, and Jesus famously replies with the story of the Good Samaritan.

The motion of wisdom is a dual-motion: inward to the Light within with a whole-being opening-to and embracing; outward to open to and embrace that same Light as It shines out of everything, including the core of each human conscious moment.

“God” is a word, a concept, a notion. God is both the One spiritual Reality that underlies, creates, sustains, and shines through all things AND the interconnected flowing-together of all created things. God is not an idea. Wiser ideas about God point with more poetic Truth towards God than less wise ideas do. Pointing better towards God is more helpful than pointing worse towards God: we are all fundamentally the same and can thus more clearly and profitably understand a good poem about being in love or a moment walking on the beach or the experience of holiness than we can clearly and profitably understand a poor poem about such fundamental existential aspects of human life. But in the end, all ideas and even all feelings about being in love or a moment on the seashore or connecting with God are just poems. They can help one get a sense of what to look for and what to expect; but only if one is at least wise enough to interpret them with a modicum of success. All good poems presuppose that human experience is fundamentally universal. A good poem about God works because everyone already has God shining through them, just as everyone has some inkling of what it would be like to be truly happy giving one’s full delighted devotion to someone who returned the favor, and just as everyone has some inkling of what it is like to breathe deep and feel the lull cradled within each moment.

We say “God is Love”; “God is Light”; “God is everything”; “God is What is”; “God is the underlying spiritual Reality shining through everything that is also everything, and everything runs together as one”

But what is God like? Does God have an individual presence as well as a universal one? Does God get angry? Is God lonely? Poetry about God becomes less effective when you try to hone in on such details. They aren’t the point. They aren’t helpful in the work of orientating one to better and better organize one’s feeling/thinking/acting around the Light within. And that is the point of spiritual poetry.

Still, I wonder about the last of those questions. Is God lonely? God is an infinite explosion of joyfully selfless infinitely overabundant giving/cherishing/compassionating/uplifting. That is to say: God is Pure Love. Human love contains within it a wound for the loved one. One needs to love and be loved by one’s loved ones. Maybe enlightened humans no longer have such a need for a reciprocative tenderness within love, but most of us aren’t like that. So don’t we most of us need God to be wounded for us to feel loved by God? Does God then cut Godself with a wound for each sentient moment so that those sentient moments can feel loved by God in a way that makes sense to them? Or are our spiritual cores arranged in such a fashion that we can feel loved by God without God hurting for need of us?

Is such speculation helpful or harmful? I am lonely, that doesn’t make God lonely.

Mostly in spiritual poetry, one gets the sense that God is enough for Godself, that God is life overflowing, that God is pure joy. Could God be all that and yet choose to suffer along with us? Would God do that just so we — at least in our non-enlightened states — could more meaningfully feel God’s love and more meaningfully connect to God? Or could this suffering-along-with go deeper than that? Is there of necessity suffering within compassion? And does God feel compassion for us, not just to be nice to us, but because God is Love and Love is compassionate?

But is Pure Love compassionate? Or is it only human love that reaches its apogee in compassion? If God is all there is, what does God need to feel compassion for? There’s nothing outside God.

I fear we are wandering too far afield. God is Pure Love. We can experience God more and more by better and better loving the Light within with our whole being and recognizing and fully embracing the Light shining out of everyone else. We can experience better and better God by getting better and better at organizing our feeling/thinking/acting around the Holiness within that alone Knows that and in what way it is True to say, “We are all in this together.” We can experience God better and better by better and better pursuing the universal values: aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, joyfully-sharing. We can experience God better and better by relaxing, breathing deeply, pushing out from within, turning ourselves inside out, listening from the pit of our gut out, opening to the Light shining through all things and ultimately blurring-together everything as One.

So what is God? God is the starting point, the path, and the endpoint: God is the Love that calls us to seek the what is truly best for everyone; and God is the opening to that Way of being; and God is the conclusion of the Way: Pure Love creates, shines through, sustains, and love-lifts everyone and everything; but even more than that: Pure Love is the infinite fire that melts all things into one thing. This is not a future melting, but the current and eternal state of things — it is how Reality and reality relate to one another.

Why does the poem, “God is Love” work? Because you already know that God is Love. If we did not all have the seeds of wisdom within us, we would have no hope of growing in wisdom. Because wisdom is the conscious experience of Reality, and the tool for experiencing Reality is wisdom. We seek to grow in wisdom. We seek to open up to the Light within, to work with It to get better and better at feeling/thinking/acting aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, kind, loving, compassionate, joyfully-together and joyfully-sharing. We can only make sense to ourselves to the degree that we do this; we can only make sense to ourselves to the degree we follow our own inborn rules for feeling/thinking/acting. We can only make sense to ourselves to the degree we develop our inborn wisdom. Our inborn wisdom is who we really are; we need it to make sense to ourselves.

Authors: The usual crew of restless wannabe astronauts
Editors: Bartleby the “Never Mind” Willard & Amble the “What? No, but seriously, What?” Willard
Copyright: AMW